Profitability
of the company was a refrain we heard, sometimes welcomed (that it was
true),
Is it? That is, are they really making more money these days, or just
controlling costs better? I heard sales of equipment were very depressed...
also a recent management reaffirmation that they are a *hardware* company,
which is depressing in and of itself...
I beg to differ (about its being depressing). I think if they had
thought of themselves as a hardware company to begin with, they would
have built Ivory and the various products based on it a good three or
four years earlier, and quite plausibly saved their corporate a*s. If
there had never been a time when Suns had a better price/performance
ratio for running Lisp, they would have had a market that might not
have been very large, but would have been steady and loyal. As it
was, the appearance of the Sun 4 at AAAI-87 was the all-but-fatal
blow.
I can't resist adding that had they concentrated on hardware volume,
they would have attracted more third-party software vendors who
collectively could provide far more functionality than Symbolics ever
could hack up. And it's functionality that people buy machines for.
-- Scott